... And Number Three

They can't all be good. Michelle Diaz of the Poway Chieftain didn't like the show. Or, more accurately, she really, really, really didn't like the script.

“Boy Gets Girl” — currently playing at PowPAC — takes an up-to-the-minute issue and really wants to make a point. However, the stalker suspense piece gets bogged down in efforts at symbolism and lofty speeches. In the end, the script bypasses art in favor of philosophizing. "

I hate to admit that here she makes a point. At least, in hating the play, she throws me a bone:

"PowPAC’s Kelly Lapczynski does well as Theresa Bedell, who is the object of a loner’s obsessive romancing. Her uptight character — a successful New York journalist with little time for a personal life — goes from annoyed to angered to terrified with believability and appropriate intensity.

"Yet the story arc that Theresa travels seems inevitable from the get-go, as does the development of every other character. Going into the play with any prior knowledge of the subject matter, a viewer could easily predict where the characters — as individuals and as a whole — will find themselves at the close of the final act."

From that point on, Diaz herself does a lot philosophizing about the structural problems of the script -- the forced trajectory of the stalker's escalating "creepiness factor," the distracting introduction of a seemingly superfluous character, and the scene by scene pattern of the play which makes the plot seem contrived. She ends with:

"While the actors and director Jeffrey Gastauer make a commendable effort to breathe convincing life into the faulty script, by the semi-anticlimactic ending, the play hasn’t managed to illuminate a slice of reality in a unique way."

And with that, I will believably hunt down some lunch to chew with appropriate intensity.